The Life and Works Complete. MACAULAY, Thomas Babington.

A late-Victorian edition, smartly bound, of Macaulay's biography and collected works. By the end of the 19th-century, estimates suggest that over a million volumes by Macaulay (1800-1859) had been published. These eclipsed the sales of novels, and his readership extended to women, the working class, and school classrooms. This collected edition includes George Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (1876), Macaulay's speeches, poetry, and his enduringly successful Essays and History of England. The latter "gave to the English-speaking world a vision of national progress, constitutional liberty and moral self-confidence which dominated Victorian historical writing" (PMM). PMM 328. 10 vols, octavo (215 x 134 mm). Steel-engraved portrait frontispiece to vol. I. Contemporary calf, spines with red and grey-brown morocco labels, compartments richly gilt, double gilt fillet, corner rosettes, turn-ins ruled in blind, marbled endpapers and edges. Bindings lightly rubbed and marked, superficial split to foot of vol. IV rear joint, contents foxed. A very good set.